Taxidermy, taxidermi-you
From July, 2006
There is one kind of polar bear at the bar in Estacada, OR.: the freaking huge kind.
A polar bear at the zoo is usually more than 20 feet away, sleeping and, by my best guess, the size of a St. Bernard. A polar bear in Estacada stands 12 feet tall, a few inches from your nose and is, as previously mentioned, freaking huge.
But this is what we have come for at 11 am, t
hat and a stiff Bloody Mary.
Estacada is a dot of town. It's a speck of pepper on the T-Bone steak that is Oregon. It has one gas station, which proudly boasts a restaurant called Taco Time. It is an hour east of Portland and the last sign of humanity before an enormous State Park. Amazingly, it also hosts the Safari Club, without a doubt the most bizarre watering hole in America.
Giving it a style is tough to pinpoint. African-Apocalypse Chic? Frozen Jungle? Embarrassingly American? The Safari Club is where you go when you need a drink, some greasy Chinese food and to sing karaoke under a stuffed cheetah.
I've heard mutterings of this place since I moved to Portland three years ago. Part Animal Kingdom, part dive bar, part totally worth the drive. The Safari Club is where big game hunting marries binge drinking and pops out a baby of Elephant Man proportions.
The story goes that the owner of this tiny bar happened to be the country's foremost safari hunter in the 50s and 60s. Facing the problem most famous hunters encounter, which is, "What to do when your home gets cluttered with stuffed tigers?" this man smacked logic in the face and turned his bar into a taxidermy museum.
It's places like this that give Europeans the impression that all Americans own firearms. And I'm starting to believe it myself.
You are greeted at the entrance by the aforementioned freaking huge polar bear and his smaller cousin, the Alaskan Brown Bear. Both are on their hind legs flashing teeth and claws like switchblades. Both are the size of economy cars. Sadly, both have a bald spot below their stomachs. I guess the penises were removed to make the Safari Club a suitable attraction for Sunday school field trips.
These two beasts are trapped behind glass, in front of them are two hand written pieces of paper taped to the window, "Restaurant" with an arrow to the right and "Bar" with an arrow to the left. These are stuck on the glass so that you can't really read the plaques telling where these two wrecking balls were killed. Almost as if they are just part of the wallpaper scheme.
We are all hungover from a night of camping and near-mainlining of liquor, so this trip is two birds with one stone: see stuffed gazelles and swallow Bloody Marys. We are not disappointed on either front.
A dark hallway leading to the lounge is some sort of backwoods natural history museum. Huge, nightmarish African animals, gorgeous and incredibly dead, lead our way to vodka and tomato juice. Right next to the pool tables, two Bengal tigers wrestle, each a hiccup from tearing the other's throat into a tasty snack.
To their left, a leopard, spotted and sleek and equally dead, sits on plastic rock ready to destroy a daydreaming hyena. A little further down the Tunnel of Taxidermy a stiff gazelle watches over the Oregon Lottery poker machines.
I failed to mention the entire building looks like a grass hut. Or at least it did in 1971 when the Safari opened its door. Estacada has a cute downtown as short as the distance between third base and home plate. The buildings are sturdy brick and classic. The Safari has a thatched roof that was once painted green, but now could best be called grayish. The highest point in Estacada is the faded Safari Club sign that fails to mention a word about the frozen zoo hell inside.
But it doesn't need a sign; it's pretty obvious where all the dead animals hang out in this town.
So past the pool tables is the tiny bar and lounge. Antelope heads are shoulder-to-shoulder on the wall. Behind the bar a massive, fully preserved and fully dead, buffalo's head watches us. It dwarfs the bartender's standard, human-sized skull. It's intimidating to sit across from, especially sipping a Bloody Mary as hangover tingle numbs your limbs.
I drown out my
friends' chatter and try and piece this together. Why would a man do this? Why wouldn't he just donate these pieces to a museum? Or to a school? Or to Ted Nugent?
I'm supposed to believe the owner flew to Africa, risked possible death to kill a tiger, had it sent back to Spokane, Washington to have it stuffed (this info was related to me via weathered plaque next to the brown bear) and then put it in a bar in Estacada? While, yes, this is a great roadside attraction, there has to be an easier way to sell Bloody Marys at 11 am on a Sunday. Was the World's Largest Aluminum Foil Ball already busy?
A dense American pride, perhaps? A message to the youth of Estacada to, "Stay in school, don't do drugs and clean your rifle." Is it some symbol of a bygone era when we, as Americans, assumed we could kick anything's ass? Eskimos may brag about using every single part of a polar bear when they kill it, eating the meat and wearing the fur and whatever you do with the teeth, but did they ever use it to sell Bloody Marys?
All I know is that it is possibly the most brilliant anti-theft device in history. If bank and liquor store proprietors would proudly showcase rhinos they shot and killed, their robbery rates would plummet. I would wager one gazelle pelt that says the Safari Club has never been held up, because the criminal element knows somewhere near the cash register a rifle big enough to kill a tiger is waiting.
Next to the dueling neutered bears, the centerpiece of the bar is the dance floor and stage. The bartender says they have a band once a month and karaoke on the weekends. This makes me incredibly sad as it has always been a dream to poorly sing Huey Lewis' "Power of Love" on a stage with a thatched roof and two pouncing cheetahs with a snarl that says, "I Break for Human Meat," shooting out above me.
We drink the Safari's weak coffee and eyeball-popping Bloody Marys and ask locals where the best place to eat a pizza would be. Meanwhile, the souls of exotic animals float in and out of the room. And I begin to ask myself why men build half the roadside crap in this country. What makes a man carve a maze out of a cornfield or advertise the world's smallest bicycle?
Is this just an American thing? Is there an Indonesian equivalent to the Mystery Spot? For that matter, would Indonesians give a shit if they were here? What makes six American kids roll out of bed with Hiroshima-sized headaches in order to say they've sipped Bloody Marys with 12 stuffed animals?
